CHIP-MEDITATION PART I

3.5 stars

Rather relaxing and trippy album from the German duo SOFTWARE. Their music is mostly inspired by the Berlin electronic school, especially TANGERINE DREAM and KLAUS SCHULZE.

"Chip Meditations Part I" makes the listener dive into an electronic journey inside the computer. The pieces are smoothly sequenced in order to create an hypnotic and robotic effect. For that, the sound is very similar to SCHULZE's "Audendity". The highlights here are the enchanting "Self Similarity Life" and the last ambient part of the album. "Julias-Dream" is a pun mixing PINK FLOYD's eponymous track and the sets of the mathematician Julia, which serves as the basis of the well-known fractal set of Mandelbrot, displayed on the cover.

I recommend this band to all fans of KLAUS SCHULZE, electronica and ambient music.

It's four years since a SOFTWARE review here, so I'll throw in a quick one. It's a German duo of Michael Weisser & Peter Mergener, one of the main acts in the Innovative Communication label. Their branch of electronic music is rather 80's, but not in a horrible way. They can be compared to the likes of Conrad Schnitzler (and perhaps to Jean Michel Jarre, to a lesser degree): their music is plainly electronic in sound, not attempting to be anything else. Not soft soundsapes à la Vangelis. And their themes are quite non-narrative, either dealing with outer space or somehow clinically scientific such as the world of computers etc. And perhaps that feature is one of the reasons for that 80's feel, the same way out-of-date or worn-out as the original film TRON (I wonder if the new Tron film is any good...). Technologically, they were very strongly on the crest of the development of computer-made sounds. But the world has come a long way since those days...

This album is one of their earlier ones, probably not among their finest efforts. Well, the title is very poignant. Chip-Meditation. Many of the tracks are quite long, I'd say overstaying their welcome quite often. There are no tracks that would feel very different or fresh among the other ones. But still, not a bad album at all if you are into this sort of music. 2,5 stars.

Software's music is generally characterized by sounding like a more tame, new-age version of Klaus Schulze, and that is very much the case on Chip-Meditation Part I. This album is decent progressive electronic, except that it doesn't really develop very much at all. There are very few structural progressions in the tracks themselves or as a whole. All of these tracks follow the same light pulse and light synth that really makes this album seem like a cold landscape of the inside of a computer. Even though the tracks don't exactly progress in structure, every song does start quiet and gradually builds in intensity with the addition of small sounds that previously were missing. This album would be completely new-age boredom if there were synthetic sounding new-age drum beats, but those appear very rarely and are hidden behind the monotonous synths that travel the cold environment of this album.

This album is very tame compared to most progressive electronic music, and seems like pre- new-age material for the most part. Chip-Meditation Part I is fantastic listening for attempting to drift off to sleep, but don't expect any extensive or emotional mind voyages here.